shadow of britain

Chapter 577 Empire Publishing
From literary enjoyment to political news, from economic insights to scientific discoveries, we set out from the heart of the Industrial Revolution and built an empire of wisdom chapter by chapter. Empire Publishing is dedicated to spreading enlightenment and progress.

—— Empire Publishing Group’s corporate motto
In the office of the dean of the University of Göttingen, the oak table is piled with thick documents and academic papers.

Outside the window, the golden autumn leaves sway gently in the evening breeze, as if reminding us of the passage of time.

Arthur's head was buried in piles of academic documents. If it weren't for the top hat on his head, no one would have noticed that there was a six-foot-tall young man sitting here.

He scanned the academic papers presented at the Electromagnetic Conference. Although as the most experienced detective in Britain, he had long been accustomed to tracking down criminals during his police career, but now he had to carefully study these obscure academic articles.

But reviewing academic articles was not the most painful part. What made Arthur most painful was that these articles were almost all written in Latin, and the remaining small part was written in French.

Although Arthur learned Latin well when he was studying at the University of London, and the French taught by Dumas was sufficient for daily communication, this did not mean that he could use these two languages ​​fluently for academic exchanges.

Because these articles contain too many professional academic terms and terminology, and the Latin courses in the history major at the University of London never teach professional terms in electromagnetism. As for the French taught by Dumas, although the fat man taught Arthur many uncommon words, many of those words are not worthy of being used in formal occasions.

Therefore, in order to understand these articles, Arthur had to keep Latin and French academic dictionaries at hand for reference at any time.

From time to time, he picked up a pen and made notes on the side, and occasionally frowned. Without thinking too much, he must have encountered some difficult concepts.

The office was so quiet that the only sounds could be heard: the turning of pages and the ticking of the wall clock.

As time passed, even the steaming hot tea had already gone cold.

But Arthur obviously had no mood to taste it at this moment. His attention was completely focused on the manuscript in front of him. The electromagnetism enthusiast racked his brains trying to find some pattern or clue from these complex data and theories.

Suddenly, he stopped what he was doing, focused his eyes on a certain paper, and a thoughtful expression appeared on his face.

He tapped the table lightly, as if thinking about some of the arguments in the paper. After a moment, he began to scribbled some notes on a blank piece of paper next to him, occasionally looking out the window, and suddenly sighed: "This is simply not a job for humans."

The red devil, who was lying on the recliner with a red teacup in his hand, took a sip of tea and shook his head without even raising his eyelids: "You can do 1+1, but you don't understand 2+2?"

Arthur laughed at himself and said, "I can't prove that 1+1=2, Agares. I never thought that I would be so respected in your heart."

"If you can't even prove that 1+1=2, then where do you get the courage to take on the job of reviewing academic papers?" The Red Devil mocked: "A pig farmer can be a senior superintendent, but that doesn't mean you can be an artist or a natural philosophy researcher."

Arthur leaned back in his chair and tasted the soured tea. The bitter taste made him frown. "Agares, I know your power lies in language, science and art, but your self-promoting remarks are still too shameful to hell. Those German theoretical electromagneticists are a lesson for you."

Agares just scratched his ears when he heard this. "My dear Arthur, since the script of Turandot was completed, your personality has once again returned to its current harsh state. I thought this experience would teach you some lessons in personal growth."

"You should have thought of it earlier." Arthur stretched himself and said, "I am even more stupid now than before."

As Arthur was saying this, there was a knock on the door.

"Please come in."

The door of the office was pushed open, and the sound of someone entering was heard before the person was seen. Two noisy Jewish guys squeezed in together without giving way to each other.

"Damn it! Heine, you are such an uneducated fellow."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Disraeli, but I don't think I'm uneducated. You know, prenatal education is very important for a person. My mother read elegant literary works when she was pregnant, so I became a poet. As for you, your mother read mostly gangster novels when she was pregnant with you, so you became a British politician."

"You are as insufferable as your poetry."

"Really? That's unfortunate, because I was planning on publishing more."

Although Disraeli was already a famous figure in British politics, he was clearly still a level below Heine, who made a living by making harsh comments.

He slapped Arthur's desk and shouted at his old friend: "Arthur, as the major shareholder of "The Limey", I am firmly opposed to the continued publication of Mr. Heinrich Heine's works."

Arthur was used to their conflicts, so he took a sip of tea and said, "What's wrong with that? Benjamin, I know you two don't have a good relationship. But you have to know that British readers like Heinrich's works very much. According to the current situation of the London publishing market, the standard price of a three-volume novel in London is 31 shillings and 6 pence, and the price of a one-volume book like a collection of poems is even more expensive. Heinrich's book can easily sell two or three thousand copies, so why do we have to go against the money?"

Disraeli grabbed his collar as if he had heard some horrific news, and added drama to himself like a protagonist in a classical drama who was experiencing the separation of life and death: "Money? Material desire! Yes, it is these things that have corrupted our ancient and beautiful English society! Heine's book is a bestseller, that's true, but as a well-known magazine, "The Brit" has a more sacred mission on our shoulders! We can't let the opinions of the German petty bourgeoisie, the decadent and radical republican ideas, and the loss of ethical and moral concepts infect this land!"

Heine snorted disdainfully when he heard this: "Then why don't you start by removing Elder Carter's works from the shelves!"

"Shut up!" Disraeli immediately felt guilty when Heine mentioned Elder.

Although the best-selling authors of "The Limey" are Alexandre Dumas, Charles Dickens and Disraeli, in fact, if we count those anonymous works that cannot be published through formal channels, the author with the largest circulation of "The Limey" is Elder Carter.

Even if Carter's poetry collection Flowers of Evil, which was banned by the House of Commons Publishing Committee, is excluded, this well-known military writer in the Royal Navy still published short story collections such as Scent of a Woman, The Hangover in the East End, The Jungle of the Amazon, Encounter with Dolphins, Five Miles, A British Monk's Journey to the West, and Look! The White-Bone Demon.

Although these short stories are destined to never be discussed publicly and never pass the book publishing review, you have to admit that everyone, whether in the upper or middle class, likes such stories very much. Even the lower-class workers who can barely read like to squeeze into the pubs in the East District in their spare time to listen to the storytellers tell a few such adult stories.

Moreover, since these shoddy and unpackaged questionable books were mostly printed through underground channels, they did not need to pay taxes and the printing costs were also very low, so their prices were also very affordable. Because even if such a single-volume story collection was sold at 6 shillings, it could still get a return on investment of up to 80%.

The combination of a huge market, low prices and high returns on investment has further promoted its spread.

Later, even though the Brit felt that the money was too little, it stopped privately distributing these short story collections, but they could not stop the underground pirates from continuing to reprint Elder's anonymous masterpiece. In response to this phenomenon, Sir Arthur Hastings, the original shareholder of the Brit, also published a literary review of this phenomenon in private.

"These books belong to a new genre of fashionable fiction, and although I am reluctant to admit it, Elder has made a unique historical contribution to the development of erotic literature, and he is an epoch-making figure in the development of British literature as a whole. If Fanny Hill Memoirs can be called realistic erotic literature, then Elder's boring essays belong to romantic pulp fiction. Nowadays, I hear many people praise Charles Dickens as the new Shakespeare, but Elder should actually enjoy the same praise. He is also Shakespeare, but his achievements are underground."

This phenomenon also caused the editorial department of "The Brit" to reflect deeply.

At an internal meeting at the beginning of the year, after a collective vote by shareholders, everyone agreed that they should take drastic measures, bid farewell to the undignified entrepreneurial era of that year, and shoulder the social responsibility of promoting progressive ideas that "The Litter" should have shouldered.

Of course, not all shareholders voted in favor. Alexandre Dumas expressed his indignation at the decision to ban Elder's essays.

The honest and loyal Mr. Dumas thought: Elder’s strengths are not many, and if he is not allowed to write even these few things, then wouldn’t the rest be all weaknesses?
Dumas also angrily denounced Disraeli at the meeting. He thought that this guy had been pretending to be noble since he was elected as a member of parliament, and wanted to transform "The Limey" into a gospel for priests to preach. For this reason, he also made a harsh remark and reminded everyone: "The reason why "The Limey" can be successful is because of its own fashionable novel positioning, although Elder's work is a bit vulgar and not suitable for direct publication. However, if we blindly refuse the consistent principle of diversity, what will be the difference between us and "Blackwood" in the future?"

Dumas' strong opposition brought this shareholders' meeting to an abrupt end, but the issue of how to properly deal with pulp novels, serious literature, art reviews and other articles that are not suitable for being placed in the pages of "The Brit" still remains.

Just then Heine mentioned Elder's matter. Arthur glanced at the scattered academic papers on the table, and suddenly a new idea popped into his mind.

According to the convention of academic conferences, the academic reports here should be compiled into a book and published uniformly.

However, the small city of Göttingen did not have a decent publishing house, so whenever professors and lecturers here wanted to publish academic papers, they could only submit them to academic journals in Berlin, Munich and other places.

Such a good opportunity, instead of giving it to others, why not give it to "The Brit"?

Of course, this is not about publishing scientific papers in a literary magazine like "The Brit", but about creating a new magazine in the same way as the supplement "The Economist" was created.

Although The Economist was just an unknown new magazine at the time, it soon took over the readership of liberal political publications such as The Westminster Review and The Edinburgh Review thanks to the active contributions of economists from the University of London, such as Mill.

The Brit, with its piles of academic reports at the European Electromagnetic Conference, not only had the honor of being the first to announce the concept of resistance to the whole of Europe, but was also able to open up the market for scientific journals by relying on the fame of Gauss, Faraday, Ampere, Oersted and others.

Correspondingly, Elder's anonymous pulp novels should be taken out separately and serialized in a new publication, which will not damage the reputation of "The Limey" and can be cut off in time if something goes wrong in the future, just like the shell bank used to handle the Foreign Office funding.

Moreover, the new publications incubated by such vertical business strategies also have different uses.

The Brit was aimed mainly at the middle classes, The Economist had its views on the City of London and Whitehall, pulp fiction was popular and profitable, and scientific journals were even more impressive.

At least for the German scientific community, owning an authoritative scientific journal means that you have the path to promotion and wealth for countless scholars. After all, in the German education community, an important criterion for measuring academic reputation is to see how many papers you have published in authoritative journals. As for the UK and France, although there are no hard and fast regulations on the number of papers published by scholars, everyone still privately regards it as an important indicator.

Wasn't the reason why scholars of the Royal Society were clamoring for system reform because they discovered that many members of the society had never published natural philosophy papers in Annals of Nature?

Arthur rolled his eyes and kindly interrupted the verbal battle between Heine and Disraeli.

"Benjamin, I've thought about it and what you said is not completely unreasonable. We even discussed this issue early on. The Brit is a publication based in British society that focuses on publishing trendy and fashionable novels. Works like On Romanticism are obviously more suitable for serialization in a specialized literary review magazine or the art review section of a newspaper."

Heine was shocked by Arthur's argument. He thought the guy wanted to go back on his word. "Arthur, you can't just take this guy's one-sided words. I believe the British middle class has enough appreciation to read On Romanticism."

When Disraeli saw that Arthur actually agreed with his point of view, he immediately laughed and said, "Yes, Arthur, you are right. We should have changed our "Liberty" long ago! We are a fiction magazine, not a refugee camp. Although I sympathize with some people and I am willing to donate to them, I don't think we should casually stuff a bunch of Polish soldiers, French emperors, Italian sailors or German petty citizens into our pages."

"Of course." Arthur smiled, "That's because we have a better place to accommodate them, such as our supplement The Economist."

"Hmm?" Disraeli heard Arthur's hidden meaning. "You are going to publish 'On Romanticism' in The Economist?"

"It's not appropriate to publish it there. As I said before, if possible, we'd better create an inclusive newspaper."

"Newspaper?" Disraeli pondered. "You want to expand our business? That's not impossible. But if we want to publish a newspaper, we have to expand our current staff by at least three or four times, hire seven or eight reporters, add a few new editors, and update the printing equipment. Arthur, you should still remember that my previous failed investment was publishing a newspaper. The complexity of the process of publishing a newspaper is not at the same level as that of publishing a magazine."

"I've considered that, too." Arthur nodded slightly and said, "So I think that at this stage, it would be best for us to start by adding new magazines and expanding our business."

Arthur tapped the mountain of papers on the table with his fingers. "For example, let's start by launching a scientific journal to test the waters. The University of Göttingen has ready-made academic resources. We can easily find reviewers and editors here. The only thing we lack here is experienced publishing practitioners and distribution experience."

"Scientific journals?" Disraeli thought about it for a moment, then he did a simple calculation and shook his head. "I don't think this is necessarily a profitable business."

Arthur didn't say it directly, but hinted at him indirectly: "But this may be able to solve the urgent problem of the Duke of Sussex, Benjamin. Sometimes publications are not just about money. As you said, this is a matter of social progress and the traditions of ancient England."

As soon as Disraeli heard the Duke of Sussex, his keen political sense immediately made him realize that there might be opportunities for political speculation here.

"I...I seem to have heard that the Duke of Sussex is keen on sponsoring art and science. Does he also want to publish a paper on natural philosophy?"

"It's not just him," Arthur hinted. "There are many people in Britain who are interested in natural philosophy. Otherwise, why would nobles, generals of the army and the Royal Navy, as well as bankers and factory owners, all be vying to join the Royal Society?"

Heine also sensed something was wrong. He said sarcastically, "So what are you going to call this new magazine? Vote Bribery?"

"No." Arthur smiled. "Heinrich, you can call it Nature or Science. Which one do you choose?"

"Then let's call it 'Nature'." Heine shook his head and said, "Because it is in line with the natural laws that have existed for thousands of years, but it is not 'scientific' at all."

(End of this chapter)